The presidential transition of Donald Trump has turned from reality television into a spy story even Hollywood could not sell: US intelligence services have concluded, along with their British cousins, that President Vladimir Putin of Russia has run a campaign of information warfare to disrupt democracies. The Central Intelligence Agency believes that Moscow aimed to elect Mr Trump.
These goals are one and the same. Mr Trump is odds-on to be the most disruptive US president in history. We are in uncharted waters: an American election has never been the target of an intelligence operation run by a KGB veteran. That said, the history of the cold war is a guide to where we are headed.
The CIA itself began trying to fix elections within months of its creation in 1947. The first target was Italy; American spies backhanded bushels of cash to conservative politicians and Catholic priests to shore up Christian Democrats and defeat Communist candidates. It worked. Millions laundered through the Marshall Plan went to conservative and centrist parties in western Europe.